Passengers Georgia and her 15-year-old daughter Melaina said their pet escaped from its travel bag and disappeared under a high-speed train as it prepared to leave Paris for Bordeaux, in south-western France, with 800 passengers onboard.
After 20 minutes of them trying to persuade staff to rescue it, the train departed, killing the cat.
“We saw him sliced in half,” Melaina told the animal rights association 30 Million Friends at the time. “They told us it wasn’t their problem, that it was just a cat and that we should have had it on a leash.”
SNCF offered the cat’s owners a free ticket to Bordeaux in compensation.
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Without knowing more details, I can’t find it in myself to blame the owners for the cat getting loose. They did keep the cat in “its travel bag” which I assume is dedicated for travelling with a cat and not just a random backpack. It’s not their fault if either their cat was too crafty or the bag itself was flawed.
Perhaps not their fault, but definitely their responsibility.
It’s their responsibility but it’s also the train operator’s responsibility to not intentionally slice animals in half, so it’s not like they’re the only people with any responsibility here. I also feel like they have a duty to make sure the tracks are safe and free of obstructions, especially on a train that moves at about 300 mph. The cruelty aside, I would definitely feel less safe boarding a TGV train knowing they just run over stuff they don’t feel like moving.
To be sure: I wasn’t disagreeing with the sentiment against the train operator :) Their apparent lack of interest in trying to get the animal off the track is appalling.